Recordings of the four selected interpreting sessions will be transcribed with all linguistic and phonetic details: filled pauses, restarts and repetitions. These features will help in discussing the positions of omissions and pauses, examining whether the occurrence of
omissions and pauses come with other types of dusfluencies. Where the utterance is not distinguishable in the recording, the syllable will be marked by one X. The researcher will compare the source text and target text by reading through the transcribed target text (Chinese) while listening to the recording of the source speech (English). Any omission found will be marked on the transcripts. The same procedure will be conducted by the same researcher about one month later, to increase the intra-rater reliability. Sound editing software Adobe Audition is to be used to locate silent pauses. Silent pauses that are less than 2 seconds in duration will not be tracked for they might not be viewed as having a negative influence on listener (Macías, 2006).
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To facilitate a scientific research, the operational definitions of omission and pause need to be stated clearly. The marking of omissions will exclude three out of the five types of
deliberate omissions proposed by Korpal (2012), three of the four types of inconsequential omissions proposed by Barik (1971), and one additional type added by the researcher: words used to address the congregation. The reason why the researcher excluded addressees from discussion is because they almost always refer to the entire congregation, for example, the use of
“brothers and sisters”, and “saints”. However, if the speaker only addressed a specific group of people among the congregation, for example, “young people” or “sisters”, omissions of such cases in the interpretation will still be marked. The omissions of cultural allusions and subjective assessment, though deemed deliberate by Korpal (2012) will still be marked in this study
because, in the translating and interpreting practices in the Local Church, cultural preference of the translator or interpreter is not encouraged (Nee & Lee, 1991).To summarize, the types of omissions that will not be marked on the transcripts are repetitions, redundancies, empty fillers, sentence connectives, definite article, specification, and addressee. Examples drawn from the corpus used in the present study are given as follows.
1. Repetition (not coded)
Now the Lord’s recovery is not just some slogan we have. It’s not slogan we have.
2. Redundancy (not coded)
Now four, after three we come to four.
3. Empty fillers (not coded)
Our inner intuition is dormant. You see this. You need to wake up.
4. Sentence connectives (not coded)
39 He is there with us, and He is there among us.
5. Definite article (not coded) Let’s come to the outline.
6. Specification (not coded)
Those words “through your petitions” implies the supply of the Body of Christ.
7. Addressee (not coded)
Brothers and sisters, religions today exalt men.
8. Omissions that will me marked and coded (M)
a. ST: Thank You. Your prevailing blood is silencing the accusation of the devil.
TT: 這個血也叫魔鬼一切的控告停止
Missing information: Thank you. Your prevailing
b. ST: …after the shipwreck, and he was imprisoned in Rome…
TT: …在這個經過了船難之後
Missing information: and he was imprisoned in Rome
The omissions marked will then be categorized. This study applies Altman’s (1994) three types of omissions discussed by Yeh (2012) to group the omissions marked, and uses Barik’s (1971) categorization for supplementary explanations. The three types are explained as follows. Some details of operational definitions were added by the researcher.
1. Minor omissions that can be compensated by listeners’ comprehension according to the context (coded as m1)
These omissions share some characteristics of what Barik (1971) described
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as skipping omissions. The occurrence of skipping omission might cause a loss of meaning. In the present research, if a loss of meaning can be implied by the context, it will be marked as m1. The omissions that cause a loss of emphasis, not meaning, will also be marked as m1.
Example:
ST: ... my wife would enjoy seeing some picture in real time
TT: ...我的妻子會喜歡，ㄜ，我們在看那些火山，也不是真的進到裏頭，
ㄜ，我希望拍一些照片，馬上傳給她看
Missing information: seeing some picture in real time. This can be made up by “我希望拍一些照片，馬上傳給她看” (back translation: I wanted to take some pictures and send them to her right away)
2. Minor omissions that cannot be compensated by listeners’ comprehension according to the context (coded as m2)
This type of omission is similar to the first type, yet causes a loss of
meaning that cannot be inferred within the context. It is also similar to what Barik (1971) called comprehension or delay omission. However, the use of the word “comprehension” and “delay” may infer that these types of omissions are caused by interpreter’s failure to comprehend the source text or delay in rendering interpretation (Barik, 1971) whereas it is hard to determine whether it really is the case without interviewing the interpreter.
Example:
ST: after the shipwreck, and he was imprisoned in Rome…
TT: …在這個經過了船難之後
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Missing information: and he was imprisoned in Rome. This information cannot be found anywhere else in the context.
3. Omissions that alter the meaning of the source text (coded as S as in serious)
Barik’s (1971) definition of compounding omissions, which was
explained in chapter two, best describes omissions of such kind. This kind of serious omissions happens when leaving out some components in the interpretation causes a change in meaning.
Example:
ST: ...we took a carriage, and as we were rattling along the rough stone streets of London...
TT: ...他說，我們，我們在倫敦的街上走他這樣說
Missing information: we took a carriage. The missing information caused the misinterpretation of “在街上走” (back translation: walking on the street)
4. The omissions that can hardly be categorized into any of the three types will be coded O as in others.
Two kinds of silent pause will be marked: juncture pause and silent hesitation pause.
The use of adjective silent is so that these pauses are not confused with fillers, which is some literature were called “filled pauses”. The absence with “silent” before “juncture pause” is that juncture pauses, by nature, cannot be filled pauses. The present research adopts the 2-second silent pause threshold as suggested by Macía (2006), as pauses shorter than 2 seconds are not
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pecieved as negative by listeners. The pauses occurring at “junctures”, in other words, the
“boundaries” of meaning units and the end of sentences are defined as juncture pauses. To cater to the characteristics of the Chinese language, a meaning unit in this study is a segment in a sentence in between commas or periods, in which a comma indicates a short pause in the flow and a period marks the end of a sentence. Slight pause mark (、) and colon is counted as comma;
semicolon, question mark and exclamation mark as period; quotation mark (「」or『』) and parenthesis are not counted. Pauses that occur at where punctuated with ellipses are counted as hesitation pauses. The punctuation in the transcripts was marked as in the original publication, or added by the transcribers. Examples of silent hesitation pause and juncture pause are as follows.
Silent Hesitation Pause (SHP) and Juncture Pause (JP)
Explanation: the silence following the “在” in the first line is an example of hesitation pause for it left the meaning of the preceding segment hanging. It is not a location where a Chinese speaker would stop for purposes such as breathing or placing emphasis.
The coding of omission is M followed by a number indicating the sequence of omission up to the current point in the transcript and the source text of the content where omission occurs.
The part that is missing is underlined. An example of marked omission is as follows.
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Appendix three is the complete account of how the omissions and pauses were marked on the transcript of message three. All recordings will be divided into segments of 30 minutes.
Comparisons will be made to determine whether the incidences of omission and silent hesitation pauses increase when an interpreter works for prolonged turns. This research uses both
qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The numbers of omissions and pauses, the duration of pauses of the first and following turns will be compared. A descriptive analysis will be conducted to examine the characteristics of omissions and pauses.
In message three, there are two short sections missing in the recording of the original English speech yet present in the recording of the Chinese interpretation. One is the opening of the delivery where the interpretation goes: “當他們回座位的時候，我們再唱一次第四節，一 百零九首第四節：『阿利路亞，基督得勝！阿利路亞，已得勝！阿利路亞，基督復生！阿 利路亞，已復生！阿利路亞，基督高升！阿利路亞，已高升！”. The second section is at around 35 minutes in which the interpreter talked about the content of a book. However, the English counterpart of the second section can be found in the Ministry of the Word, a magazine that records complete accounts of all messages covered in the trainings and conferences held by the LSM, though not a word-by-word transcription ("About this issue," 2013). No omission in the first section could be marked because there is no source text to draw comparison to;
omissions in the second section were marked by comparing the source text from the magazine with the recording of the interpretation. No omission was found in the second section.
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Omissions were marked within brackets with an M, followed by a number indicating how many omissions there are up to the current point in the text. The type of omission was marked in parenthesis. Source text (English) was transcribed at where an omission was found, and parts omitted were underlined.
Silent pauses longer than 2 seconds were located by software Adobe Audition. Silent pauses were marked on the transcripts using comment balloons as seen in appendix three. Silent hesitation pauses were labeled as SHP and juncture pauses as JP. For the convenience of
discussion, the occurrence of pauses will be indicated as ^[SHP] or ^[JP] at its location in a sentence in the text.
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